Day 9 Cape Le Grand to Starvation Point

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Day 9
Early start, and pack up time. 3 years ago on our Kimberley trip everyone had to wait for me while I packed up. Took me over an hour to pack up last time and now it only takes me a few minutes. It did rain again last night, so we packed wet. The mouse died in the tin. So I had to throw my hitchhiker away. After prayer we headed to Cape Le Grand beach. The decision is to drive the beach. Andre was a bit apprehensive about my vehicle and camper crossing the beach. Well I did invest into some Maxtraxx and wanted to use them. The tides down here only move about 1 m so it was unlikely we swamped by the sea. It was also high tide which gave Andre some anxious moments. We let our tyres down to around 25-30psi using our staun deflators. I asked Andre to go first while I followed just in case there were some water crossings. We spoke to a Park Ranger for some advice. I think Andre was hoping he will talk us out of driving the beach, but Linda and I were bursting out our seams to drive it. Anyway the ranger didn’t say anything negative, so we drove it. What an adventure. It wasn’t my first time driving on beach, we did it before in the Kimberleys with poorer recovery gear and a lousy compressor. We had fun on the beach. The vehicles swayed a bit on the back end and I was dragging my trailer a bit. In hindsight I should have dropped the camper’s tyres psi to around 15. But we made it to the end which was Wylie’s Point. It was only a 25km beach drive to Esperance. We pumped up our tyres and headed to Esperance for stocking. I took the scenic coastal road around Esperance and was amazed at all the nice houses build all over looking the sea. We only had a vague idea of where we were stopping that night, we were just going to drive off the beaten track to see a nice place to camp. We stuck to the coast and preferred to hit the dirt track. We stopped at Munglinup beach to have a look. This is part of Stokes NP. Nice area with pit toilets and cold showers, but there weren’t many spots we could choose. We drove a bit further and camp to Starvation point. There was boat launching area, shaded camp spots and pit toilets. We decided to camp here and do a spot of fishing as well. There was a kid on the beach who just caught a flathead. Another lovely spot for the kids to get wet. The swells were quite big though at the point and Linda got swamped by the waves. We didn’t catch anything yet again. This night I set out the shower in the camper. So we had quick hot showers for all of us. I had about 60 litres left in the tank and there were 6 of us having a shower. By next morning the tank was empty.

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